"In this provocative study, Shelly Brivic presents the history of the twentieth-century American novel as a continuous narrative dialogue between white and black voices. Exploring four of the most renowned and challenging works written between 1930 and 1990 - William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Richard Wrights Native Son, Thomas Pynchon's V., and Toni Morrison's Beloved - Brivic traces how these works progress through the interaction of white and black perspectives toward confronting the calamity of slavery and its reverberating aftermath and continuing legacy."--BOOK JACKET.